They drove in comfortable silence, well comfortable for Logan who sat resting against the seat of his truck, smoking a stogies and enjoying the chilly night air hitting his face. He kept a beer in his hand and kept his hand out the window to keep it frosty; this was nice almost like having a personal driver. He was snapped out of his relaxed mode by the sound of chattering…teeth chattering.

“You cold kid?”

They’d only been driving for about 15 minutes now and they were out on the open road. Logan was wondering how he was supposed to explain to this girl that although he didn’t want to hurt her, if she tried blasting him again he’d be forced to skew her alive like a shish-kabob. He thought that sounded pretty reasonable considering her previous actions.

“N-n-n-noooo, I’m really warm, I’m j-j-j-j-ust practicing for-r-r-r later.”

She ground out between random chatters as the chilly Canadian air hit her spine. She was still wearing only her sweat shirt and a leather jacket.

“Good to hear,” Logan said sarcastically reclining in his seat again and closing his eyes. He loved the night, and he knew being an animal himself that wasn’t so unusual, but something about frosted night air up in the wilderness, where you could smell the scent of pine and fresh snow, it invigorated him.

“S-s-s-h-h-h-u-t-t the ww-w-w-in-n-ndow… ah….ah…asshole!”

She threw the last word out like a sneeze, and Logan was about to say god bless you and realized he was talking to someone who would probably give the devil a run for his money. Logan had no intention of actually closing the window but he cracked open one eye to see if she was as cold as she was pretending to be. He could easily hear her teeth rattling around as she shivered and her body seemed to be shaking. He was almost convinced and to be thorough he brought a hand up to her face to see if she was faking or not. This proved to be a bad idea.

Logan’s bare hand touched the girls cheek, lightly if not briefly and the entire truck took a drastic turn to the right, almost over turning because of the force of the swerve gliding against the ice, the girl shrieked and Logan spit out his stogie on the floor of the truck as he hastily tried to grab on to something for support.

“JESUS H CHRIST, what the hell are you trying to do get us killed?!? Don’t you know how to drive!?!”

“It’s not my fault! Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to touch other people! Jesus!”

“PULL OVER!”

“Its fine I got it under control, we’re doing good now,” she said offhandedly

“Just pull the god damned truck over!”

There wasn’t any curb to pull the truck against and there hadn’t been any shoulder for miles, so veering as much to the side as she could without bringing the truck up onto a snow embankment, she brought the vehicle to a halt and placed it in park.

“I didn’t mean to swerve you just scared me”…she looked down at her lap before continuing, “Your hand’s are unusually warm for someone who isn’t wearing any gloves you know.”

She said the last part pretty grumpily and he could almost understand, Logan was always warm, something Rogue had complained about many a night when she would crawl into his bed. Constantly and more frequently then he would have liked, Logan had to shoo thoughts away of Marie in his bed. Like he said, she had been there before, but somehow when he tried to remember those times in the night, when she would come in covered from head to toe, just in case, he would change what really happened, which was her cuddling up next to him and falling asleep, to her and him spending the night denting the headboard; as you can see drastic difference between the two.

Often Rogue would seek him out after having one of her nightmares, once in a while he would even seek her out after he’d had a bad night and they always slept comfortably and soundly next to each other. He’d breath her in, her scent would calm him and she’d told him on more than one occasional that sleeping next to him made her feel safe.
If she only knew He thought wryly.

Despite him telling her that she didn’t need to cover up to the extent that she did, Marie would never enter his bed with so much as a bare hand on her body. Even if he told her it wasn’t necessary, she would insist, her own paranoia getting the better of her. Snuggled deep under the covers, Rogue would swear that Logan was trying to fry her alive because between the clothes, and the covers she was warm but with Logan thrown into the mix she was likely to die of heart exhaustion in the middle of the night, according to Marie Logan could “fry an egg on his chest.” He came back to himself when he caught a whiff of embarrassment wafting off of the girl. He was surprised to know she was capable of feeling that way.

“All right, I’m sorry about the unusually warm hand, now get out.”

“You’re leaving me here!?”

The girl was confused, granted she’d stolen his truck but he’d been letting her drive for well over a half hour now. Why was he suddenly kicking her out, he could of at least dropped her off in town so she’d have the hope of catching another ride.

His only answer was to sigh in frustration, and if the girl wasn’t mistaken she’d swear she heard a bit of a growl vibrating its way out of his chest. Who was this guy?

“I’m drivin, that’s all, now move.”

She didn’t like the idea of having to get out of the truck and walk around to the passenger side, what if he drove off before she got back in? The truck was still running and she didn’t think this guy was going to like it if she took the keys out of the ignition just so she could walk around to other side of the vehicle, it seemed in poor taste.

Mentally she chastised herself, like stealing his truck was such a nice thing to do? She’d even shot him with one of her low beams…he’d gotten up from that fairly easily though, if he wanted he could probably fight her off and away from his truck. Although, she figured, if he wanted to do that then he would have when he caught up with her.

“Listen Kid, we don’t have all god damned day- move it!”

“GOD! You’re so growly! It’s like driving with a god damned bear!”

She grabbed her duffel bag for assurance; at least if he took off without her she’d have her bag. She grabbed it with one hand and opened the door with the other.

“What are ya takin your bag for?”

Her only answer was to climb out of the cab and walk around to the passenger side, the door was locked when she walked around and she could see through the window that the guy hadn’t bothered to hop out of the truck but merely slid over into the driver’s side. She sighed almost sad; she should have seen this coming. He was just going to leave her in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, stuck in the freezing cold in nothing but a sweatshirt and leather jacket. She was going to be an ice pop by morning. The door was still locked, and the guy was looking at her through the window as he lit a cigar, the truck remained running and at that moment the girl would have bet good money that he was going to gear up into drive and just go on his way.


In the next second he looked at her a little impatiently and he motioned with her hand for her to hurry along…was he waiting for her? She spoke but the words came out in a surprised questioning sort of way because she didn’t think he was waiting for her.

“The door…it’s locked…?”


She hadn’t spoken the words loudly and was surprised he’d even heard her over the roar of the old engine wheezing to fight off the frost bitten air which threatened to seize the engine in its icy grip and kill it altogether. Somehow though, the man heard and he reached over across the seat and unlocked her door for her, settling back against his side and exhaling the cigar smoke. He put the car in drive but he kept his foot on the break waiting for her to get in.

For all the money in the world she couldn’t have moved, she just stood there starring at him. Was this for real? He was back in the driver’s side, he had control of the truck again, but he was still letting her come with him? After she had shot him in the chest with a beam of light and stolen his truck and everything? She’d been so obnoxious before on top of it…

“All right Listen, if you’re taking drugs or something you’re jus gonna have to tell me cuz this is the second time in a six second span that you’ve just frozen up like that- get in the truck or I’m leaving your scrawny ass here, c’mon!”

She shook her head and blinked looking at him again before hustling to grab her bag and fling herself into the truck’s cab. Off they went, him driving and her contemplating. Maybe he was crooked or something, maybe he was waiting like that bar tender outside Northern Alberta, and he was just biding his time until he could try something on her?

She stole a glance at him as he drove, he was old, not hideously so, he still had his natural hair color, although the oldest man she’d ever been with was in his 30’s and this man didn’t look much older than that, maybe late thirties, early forties. Still, she didn’t get the sense that he was being dishonest, her instincts told her he was actually a nice guy…then again her instincts were why she was stuck out here in the freezing boonies of Canada to begin with.

“I’m sorry….” She let it hang in the air for a few minutes; he didn’t so much as blink at her.

“I just needed a ride and you were the last guy to leave the bar. Oh and I’m sorry about just now, I didn’t think you were going to let me back in the truck, I kinda figured the door was locked on purpose and you were going to leave me here, that’s why I took my bag.”

Well there, she was plump out of things to say, definitely his turn now.

“And?”

And what, she wondered.

“And what?” She asked.

“And how about “gee sorry I almost roasted you alive back there, hope that didn’t hurt, hey did you want a new shirt?”

She laughed. She hadn’t laughed since she didn’t know when and the last smile to get on her face was back over 100 miles ago at a dinner out in the sticks. It was a reaction she had when she was eavesdropping on a dirty joke being told to a waitress.

He looked at her then and she could have sworn she’d seen his lip curl ever so slightly around the corner of his cigar but when she turned her head towards him there was nothing there but thick cigar smoke curling in the air and that stoic face he wore so well.

“Aw I knew you could handle that, after all look at well you did in the cage! Besides, I never use my power on other mutants unless I have to- you shouldn’t have put your hands on me, it is impolite to touch a lady out of anger.”

He choked. He actually choked on his god damn cigar smoke listening to this girl!

“Impolite? Your tellin me about polite? I caught you stealin my truck!”

“Ha! Caught being the operative word- besides that was barely my fault, you were suppose to be too drunk to drive I was only trying to help you avoid an accident.”

“Oh yeah right, I didn’t realize what a do gooder you were- and how in the hell did you figure I was a mutant?”

Logan knew what he was, knew what he had to be, hell he had blades of steel between his knuckles, but that didn’t mean he’d ever really referred to himself as a mutant before. A man, yes, the guy who was going to kick your ass, sure, a whiskey drinker, definitely and of course a damn good roll in the hay-but he rarely called himself a mutant. He liked to think of himself as abnormal if anything.

“I heard your…I don’t know what to call it….bones o’ steel?”

He laughed-lightly, this wasn’t that funny. After all he fought in the cage all the time and sure once in a while a person guessed he wasn’t entirely normal but he didn’t think teenage girls watching him- which wasn’t in itself a normal occurrence-, should be able to gauge whether or not he was a mutant.

“Explain.”

“I don’t know, everyone was yelling and I was watching you, watching the fight. It was really noisy in there but I watched you fight six different guys. The first time I heard it I didn’t know what I was hearing, I started looking around for bells or pots and pans, something making a clattering noise but the only thing I saw was glass bottles and ugly men. Every time you hit somebody though that sound went off again and then I waited and by the time you fought the fifth guy I closed my eyes and listened- no easy thing mind you in that freaking sound pit- but when the guy, the one with the baseball cap, he sent that undercut to your ribs-remember?”

Logan nodded, she really had been watching him closely.

“Well until then you two hadn’t really collided, you had gone to punch him and he blocked you and I saw him take his other hand, the one that wasn’t deflecting your fist and I saw him make a fist with it and I saw his fist going for your ribs-and keep in mind this was all going in slow motion for me- then I saw you take your free arm and you pinned his hand to your side and you head butted him-wicked move by the way!”

Logan smirked fleetingly-she was observant he’d give her that, but he could tell by the enthusiasm in her voice she must have been young.

“Anyway, that’s when I knew that metal clinking noise was you. As soon as your head collided with that guy, it was like someone slamming into a bell with a shovel! I thought the whole place knew but no one even said anything, I guess that’s the distraction that comes from losing money when you make a bet, or even those who won money who bet on you. I don’t know but I just realized then that whatever you have under your skin, it wasn’t normal bone.”

He really only had one question.

“What’s your name, kid?”

She only hesitated for a minute and then she figured it was the least she could tell him.

“Star.”

“Star?” his voice was incredulous, like she had just told him her name was Zulu Queen of the Amazonians.

“Yeah, Star, is there a problem with that?”

“I don’t know are you supposed to be a stripper or something?”

“Star’s not a stripper name!” She hated the way her voice betrayed her age, coming out indignant and naive sounding.

“Really, have you ever met a stripper?”

He had her there, she’d been on the road for six months but she hadn’t spent any time in a strip joint.

Apparently her silence answered for her.

“Exactly, and believe me I’ve met plenty and I’ve met more than one named Star.”

“Well Sorry we can’t all have show stopping names like Wolverine, you realize that’s a furry little beaver like beast with fur that looks like a skunk.”

His voice was almost deadly low and she had to struggle to hear him over the heater, had he put that on for her?

“Wolverine’s are wonderful and magnificent creatures- they don’t look like skunks and they’re apart of nature, unlike women who take their clothes off for money.”

She thought it was amusing the way he was defending his furry friends.

“Besides, my real name is Logan.”

“Yea? Good to know, thanks.”

She realized he was fishing to find out her real name, but that was a dead end. She didn’t tell anyone her real name, at least not until she spent more than 24 hours with a person. When he didn’t say anything she realized she may have backtracked in their socializing progress and tried striking up a conversation again.

“So, Lo-gan, where we goin?”

“New York.”

“WHOA! WHOA! Isn’t that a little far? You want to go to NEW YORK? IN THIS TRUCK!”

He looked down at her like she was a fruit fly he wanted to squash.

“Yep.”

“Okay listen, I appreciate the ride, but I was sorta hoping to head to Alaska, not away from it! I’m so close!”

“You’re headin to Alaksa?”

She got silent, she really didn’t know this guy enough to trust him.

He sighed, but this was a bored sigh not an angry one.

“Look kid, honestly, I’m not going to hurt you- believe me it’s tempting- but I’m just…I’m taking you to people who can help.”

“hey, I don’t need help, I’m doing fine on my own-thank you very much.”

“Yea, you’re doin great,” he rolled his eyes and a made a face that indicated that she was doing anything but.

“I didn’t think you were going to be tagging along for the journey but I don’t want to go back to New York, I want to go farther north, it’s really important okay.”

“Are you from New York then?”

It was her turn to sigh, but she wasn’t bored she was frustrated. What was she suppose to tell this guy? She didn’t like sharing and she hadn’t been expecting a pow-wow with an out of work cage fighter to be truthful. She settled for answering his question with one of her own.

“Who are these people who you’re taking me to?”

“Friends. Mutant advocates, you’re a kid, they have a school there, they can help you. No one’s going to hurt you, everyone there is like us.”

“Ha, oh I don’t think there’s anybody quite like me there. Listen, I’m not in need of schooling, I graduated high school already and I’m sure these people are really nice and all but I need to get to Alaska!”

She couldn’t help the urgency that was in her voice, this guy was annoying to her but only because she couldn’t use her mutation against him. She also wasn’t sure if she was going to have a chance to make a break for it, which if she couldn’t convince Mr. burly pants next to her to turn around and head North again, she was going to have to.

“All right, I’ll bite, what’s in Alaska?”

What was it with this guy and these questions!

“I just…want to test something out…”

It was vague but it was what she could muster at the moment.

Luckily she was saved when her stomach growled loudly. She put her hand over the offending noise maker trying to compensate for food by rubbing her belly. She actually blushed when she realized that Logan had heard her stomach growl.

Logan couldn’t be faulted for not knowing he was going to have company, he was fresh out of stale beefy jerky. Of course he should have had some on hand, here he is driving around in Canada, it was only natural that he’d run into another mutant teen on the run, and of course it was almost inconceivable that he hadn’t thought to stock his pick up full of teenage girl goodies. He was relieved to see a sign that said rest stop ahead, five miles.

“I can stop at that rest stop, we need to find a place to stay for the night anyhow.”

“We? okay let me clarify here, I’m really grateful that you’re giving me a ride, and I appreciate that you want to help me, sure is swell of you and all,” Logan could hear the sarcasm in her voice and it only made him more mad, “BUT I have to get to Alaska, so I’ll take you up on the eating offer because I am starving and if you’re so inclined to find a spot to sleep, that sounds good too, but eventually I’m going to have to hitch another ride.”

Logan didn’t really know why it meant so much to him, he didn’t believe she’d actually graduated High School, she looked too young for that. He didn’t think she was old enough to be hitch hiking all over the country either, but he did know that for some reason it mattered to him. Maybe he just saw a lot of Rogue in this girl, well a lot of Rogue in the way that this girl had nowhere to go and was a drifter, his girl, his Marie wasn’t this difficult, she was sweet and grateful and the most guff he got out of her was when she told him to wear his seat belt. This little bundle of joy next to him was another story entirely.

He sighed again, he had at least a four day drive until he reached New York, and that wasn’t calculating sleep time.

“All right then, how about this. Come back to New York with me, these people, they have a jet. Scope out the situation, see if you want to meet them and talk with my guy, he’s a good man, a patient man. I promise you, if you want to leave after you meet them and go to Alaska, they’ll take you. No questions asked.”

“Oh yeah sure they have a jet. Uh-huh and next you’re going to tell me you’re taking me to see Professor Xavier, the famous mutant advocate.”

She snorted and rolled her eyes, she couldn’t picture this guy, who looked like he spent his free time opening beer bottles with his teeth, as someone who was associated with people who owned their own jet.

“Oh, you know of Professor Xavier?”

“Yeah, who doesn’t know of the professor? He’s like completely famous? Him and that Grey Lady, they’ve even spoken in front of the Senate- not that it did any good because Senator Kelly is such an asshole, personally I think Xavier brainwashed him or something, it isn’t right the way he up and changed his mind. Good for us and all, but still something about it just doesn’t make sense. Do you know that people working for him actually upped and quit after he switched from ant-mutant to pro-mutant? One guy on his campaign, an employee who quit after Kelly switched sides got interviewed and he told his interviewers Senator Kelly had been organizing and campaigning for the Mutant Registration Act for over three years when he suddenly turned around and decided it wasn’t a good idea.”

Logan cracked his neck thinking about the Mutant Registration Act-now there was a slab of bullshit with a side of useless. He cracked his neck again thinking about the Senator, the real one, before he died and Mystique took his place.

Still he had to give the kid credit for noticing, many mutants had attributed Kelly’s change in opinion to a change of heart. Logan and the rest of the team knew better, the person who had changer their mind wasn’t Senator Kelly but Mystique impersonating him. Not a day went by that Logan didn’t wish that he had slit that blue bitch’s throat, missed opportunities haunted him sometimes. He looked down at the girl hoping what he had to say next would make her easier to deal with and not more difficult.

“Kid, I’m taking you to see Professor Xavier, and that Grey Lady.”

For once the little mouth piece didn’t seem to have much to say.

He was going to kill her, he was going to kill her and dump the body in the woods and if anyone said anything to him he was going to kill them too, morals be damned. The mighty Wolverine heaved a heavy sigh loaded with his frustrations from over the past several days; he ran stiff fingers through bristled hair as he tried to calm himself. His fingers ached from the many times he had over cracked them in an attempt to control himself. Looking around the dingy room they had rented off the interstate he had to wonder for the umpteenth time how he got himself into these situations. Another sigh before he tried approaching the door again.

“Kid, it’s been three hour’s…get the fuck out of the damned bathroom!”

Logan didn’t have to go, not anymore! He’d relieved himself in the parking lot about an hour and a half ago when it become painfully obvious that this girl was taking an obscene amount of time in the only bathroom the room had. If not for Logan’s nose he would have wondered exactly what she was doing in there.

One might have figured that she was going to be a long time considering the amount of shit they had to buy before she even agreed to hunker down for the night. Star, and he really wanted to assign her a new name when they got to Xavier’s because, he for one, would personally testify that she was no fucking Star. She insisted that they stop to buy toiletries and feminine supplies. These were not things a man such as himself knew a whole lot about, but he took her to the one place he bought all of his hygiene products-the gas station. Apparently a bar of soap and a bucket of diesel wasn’t what the girl had in mind when she said “toiletries”. She made him drive for nearly an extra hour just to find a god damned grocery store that was open and when they did find it, she’d pranced up and down the aisles moving about as fast as a square stone rolling down a hill. The way she looked over each aisle and then ran to another one, only to return to the one she had been in not three minutes later and resurvey the area as if in her short absence the whole aisle had rearranged itself on her. Logan wanted to kill her, sincerely wished her injury.

Losing his patience and not for the first time that day he banged harshly on the door.

“Kid!”

“I’m almost done fur face, just….go eat some beef jerky or something I don’t know, Jesus!”

He was going to kill her…

He sighed again, this time he was trying to alleviate the pressure which was slowly building behind his eyes. He knew, and don’t ask him how, but he knew that his mutation had been working overtime to ward off a headache-no! A migraine, which had been bubbling up ever since the little disease in the bathroom had crawled into his truck, well high jacked his truck. Normally his healing factor made sure he never saw hide nor hair of a migraine but some way, somehow this little slip of a girl, no not a girl he would never refer to that demon hogging the shower as a girl, but somehow the previously stated problem had managed to actually send his mutation into overtime because he could feel the pain behind his eyes, and pressing the bridge of his nose was having less and less of an affect. How did normal people do this every day?

Logan grabbed a beer and literally shuddered in satisfaction at the sound of the can being split open. He was going to enjoy this, a nice beer in blissful silence. It might be the last thing on this god damned trip from hell that he’d get the chance to enjoy. Honestly, if the professor didn’t already know they were coming Logan figured he would have killed that girl already. Logan cringed to recount the earlier conversation.



Upon telling Star that they were indeed going to see Professor Xavier, famed mutant activist, although Logan was acutely aware he’d never heard of the professor until he’d met him with Marie, apparently other people had. She starred wide eyed at him and persisted to accuse and bombard him with questions and interrogations until Logan couldn’t stand it anymore and actually popped out a warning claw at her to suggest she better ship up or prepared to be sliced up.

She still couldn’t believe it though, apparently Logan didn’t meet the expectations the girl had come to associate with someone as, how had she put it?

“Prestigious as Charles Xavier” she’d called him scruffy and said that he needed to stop at a gas station so she could pee, Logan should have smelled the lie but it went right over his head, his head which was filled with pretty fantasies about dropping her off at the gas station and leaving her there, never to see her again.
Once they got to the gas station the girl hopped out and came around to his side of the truck, starring at him expectantly as he smoked his stogie. He’d eyed her wearily, something that was only increasing in frequency on this road trip nightmare and when she didn’t speak he offered a sarcastically merit worthy response.

“Didja need help or something?”

Before He became fully agitated.

“No, I need you to get out of the truck, you have to give me a hand.”

With that she walked off toward the pay phone and when Logan made no signal to move she merely yelled across the station parking lot.

“Honey I really do think we should call the doctor, the rash is only getting worse!”

That earned him a few serious stares and one guy passing by his open truck window had actually looked at him like he was the world’s worst god damned pervert. Star was young enough to be his daughter, but it wasn’t like he was the one yelling out obscenities in broad day light! He did get out the truck- of course at the time it was only because he didn’t have a mutation that allowed him to filet her from across a tar topped parking lot, but he was working on fixing the distance issue rapidly and planning the severe world o’hurt he wanted to leave her in.

He reached her and the first thing he noticed was the ridiculously satisfied grin she wore on her face, he wanted to destroy her, he couldn’t describe it any other way.

“Okay, sorry,” she would do the craziest things and say sorry like she even knew what that word meant!

She held the payphone out to him.

“Call him.”

“Call who?”

It came out sounding a little more savage then he would have liked and he ground out the words in what must have been a scary fashion because she actually gulped and took a step back. Good.

“Call Xavier.”

“Why?”

“Listen, bub,” she was mocking him, he’d made the colossal mistake of calling one gas attendant bub that’d come over to ask him some asinine question at least 300 miles ago and she’d started saying the word almost immediately.

“Cut the Bub crap!”

“Sorry Bub.”

That little smirk again, he wanted to tear it off of her. She was mocking him in the middle of a gas station parking lot full of people who probably thought he had fucking herpes now and he was going to kill her and be done with it. That was just it.

The smirk fell of her face and he assumed it was because of how he looked, ready to kill her, but who knew with this girl.

“Honestly.”

He snorted, now there was a word she definitely didn’t know the first thing about!

“H-o-n-e-s-t-l-y,” She ground out the word as she annunciated it, “you have to admit I don’t know you and you have to admit you could be driving me into white slavery for all I know.”

Logan began to protest but she just cut him, and NO, it hadn’t been for the first time that day.

“I’ve trusted you a lot up until this point, instinct, something I rely heavily on told me you’re not that bad, contrary to my personal opinion but hey.”

He growled and he didn’t care who saw it, he was seriously going to throw her into a tree. Star’s belonged up high anyway; maybe he should just get her off earth. Stars weren’t on earth, and now he knew why.

“Just call Xavier’s all right, get him on the phone let me hear his voice, it is hard to believe.”

Growling, grumbling and a little shaky because he’d never had to try this hard to keep his claws *in before, he grabbed the pay phone and dialed the number for the school, the faculty line.

I was only 7:30 at this point, so he figured they would pick up.

A clear crisp African accent chirped into the phone and Logan couldn’t help but smirk.

“Yeah, hey Ro’ it’s Logan, is the professor around?”

“Logan! Hello!” She was cheerful at first before a subdued “is everything alright?” shifted her demeanor from happy to concern in a split second. She was as fickle as the weather.

“Yeah, everything’s fine, just had to talk to him about some business.”

“One minute Logan, let me get him.”

Silence, shifting, sound of footsteps, more silence, waiting. He burrowed his free hand into his pocket, to keep from strangling the little pain in the ass next to him who thought this was such a brilliant idea. He could have been calling his fellow slave traders for all she knew, but he didn’t want to say that because he was putting up with enough bullshit. Finally, sound of wheels being pulled mechanically across a carpet.

“Logan, Ororo told me you’d asked to speak to me is everything all right?”

The crisp British accent was enough to make Logan seriously hate the girl in front of him for making him do this, but he bucked up and balancing his weight on the balls of his feet he began explaining to the professor, who he, by the way, expected already knew a little bit about the situation.

“Yeah Professor," he emphasized the word as he turned to Star so she’d realize who he was talking to, “I picked up a runaway up in Canada."

He wanted to add, ‘ya know again’ but refrained as he continued.

"She’s a kid. She’s a mutant, she’s …well she’s actually just about the most unpleasant experience I’ve ever had on the road but she wanted to speak with you.”

He didn’t know what it was but whenever he spoke with the professor Logan had an urge to talk properly, he didn’t think of himself as an intellectual but he wondered if he had been one before he lost his memories, someone whose vocabulary hadn’t been limited to grunts, growls and nodding.

“I’m delighted, and Logan I trust that you wouldn’t actually talk about her as unpleasant when she was within hearing range, it really is no way to treat a child.”

Logan wanted to tell the professor unpleasant hadn’t even been the right word to use and that she was a bottom feeding little urchin but he didn’t have the chance before Star ripped the phone out of his hand.

“Professor Xavier?”

“Hello, and who am I speaking with?”

“Forgive me, I can’t tell you that yet, but I’m wearing a red sweater.”

With that Star hung up the payphone, Logan stood there slack jawed like an idiot with wide eyes.

He should have taken her to a doctor, he should have realized from the first moment he’d met her that whatever was wrong with her wasn’t something a school for mutant could fix. An asylum now, there was an idea!

“What in the nine bowels of hell do you think you’re doin girl?!”

“Shh!”

She shooed him away with a gloved hand, he didn’t even realize she had gloves, and turned her back to him.

“You made me call the man so you could hang up on him?”

“Shut up, okay? Christ, I told you I couldn’t trust you!”

He really didn’t smell drugs in the air, where was she stashing them?

“Then why did you have me call?!”

He saw her punch in a three digit number on the phone and he idly wondered what the hell was she doing? And where the hell could one go in Canada to buy a straight jacket?

He couldn’t’ help himself standing there, muttering about crazy mutant teenagers and wondered how society saw fit to lock up certain people but let other ones like this girl wonder around free.

“Yes operator,” it was a sweet and pleasant voice and Logan wondered who it belonged to, “I was wondering if you could give me the phone number for Xavier’s Institute for Gifted Youngsters, in Westchester, New York.”

He could see clearly enough the words coming out of her mouth but that didn’t sound like the girl he’d been driving with. This voice belonged to…well...a nice person.

“Yes, that’s X,A,V,I,E,R.”

“Thank you so much,” she was smiling like a Cheshire cat, even if her voice did make her sound normal her face gave it all away, “you have a good day too.”

She hung up the phone before fishing around in her pockets for more quarters. Finding them easily enough she slipped them into the pay phone and punched in another number.

Logan didn’t know what number the operator had given her, usually he called the faculty line, or what Xavier had referred to as the faculty line when he’d given him the number. He wondered if that was what she got.

On the other end of the phone, Logan could heard the sounds of a recorded voice, if he had to guess he’d say it sounded like Jeannie, but the slow way the speaker drew out their words, as if talking with someone with autism he was able to distinguish the difference between a real person speaking and a tape recording.

He heard Star muttering to herself.

“Press four for a representative.”

Ringing, ringing.

“Hello, Xavier’s Institute for Gifted Youngsters, how may I help you?”

Logan almost fell down dead when the next words came out of Star’s mouth.

“Hi, my name’s Lorna Fishbourne, I’m calling in regards to a man I’ve recently come into contact with that claims to be associated with your institution and I was hoping to verify his identity before taking further action, would you be able to tell me if Professor Xavier was available, it is urgent that I speak with him.”

It wasn’t the lies that were tumbling out of the girl’s mouth faster than she could speak, and it wasn’t the fact that he needed boots just to stand next to her this bullshit creek was so deep, but her voice was completely different. She sounded like a librarian or an Office Clerk, not that Logan knew many of those people but hey you ran into them from time to time. The teacher type, he liked to call them. She just didn’t sound like the wicked little tramp he’d been lugging across Canada. Maybe she had split personalities?

The person on the other end of the phone, a man and possibly Scott but Logan couldn’t hear well enough to determine, was speaking back to…Lorna Fishbourne? What a retarded name, he thought.

“I’m sorry, you said your name was…?”

“Fishbourne, Lorna Fishbourne, and may I ask with whom am I speaking?”

“Scott, Scott Summers, I’m a teacher here and Professor Xavier’s personal assistant, and may I ask what is the name of the man you’re calling about today?”

“Oh, I’m sorry how foolish of me, I’m calling about a Mr.,” Star panicked for the first time, and putting her hand over the end of the phone and holding it away from herself she turned to Logan.

“Psst! Mountain man what’s your last name?”

Hell if he knew, he just shrugged. Not that he had a lot of intentions of helping her anyway.

She sighed, exasperated, before returning to the phone.

“I’m sorry Sir, I had to consult my paperwork, his name is Mr. Logan, although I believe that’s his first name.”

If Logan didn’t miss his guess, he’d say he could see her blushing. Was she…embarrassed?

Telling a grown man to his face that she was stealing his truck, that wasn’t shameful but screwing up and using his first name as a last name? That was worth blushing over?! Oh this girl was a coo-coo bird waiting to pop, he had to get her the mansion and as far away from him as possible.

He could hear the almost gleeful tint of Scott’s voice through the phone.

“Ah, Mr. Logan, of course! Yes the Professor will be overjoyed to hear that you’ve got him, tell me please, is he in a lot of trouble?”

Logan could hear every word and it made the skin over his knuckles itch, almost as bad as Scott in person did and just about as bad as “Lorna Fishbourne” over here had managed to.

He could just picture that gay mega watt smile that Scott always wore and it only infuriated him more, as a matter of fact Scott and this little time bomb in front of him had that in common, the undeniable talent to piss him off in record time. Maybe there was something to that…they both shot out beams of light too…

Star was at a loss, weren’t these people supposed to like Logan? Cuz’ this guy sounded awfully excited at the prospect of him being in a pickle. Maybe they, or rather the person she was speaking to, meant someone else and the guy standing behind her really was full of it and didn’t know any of these people? She shook her head to dislodge the unpleasant thoughts as she began again.

“Well to be perfectly candid Sir, the details of the incident are, at present time, classified, I mean I’m only a bonafide secretary really and I have explicit instructions to speak with a Professor Charles Xavier and only Professor Xavier, I am sorry but I do appreciate your efforts Sir.”

“This does sound serious, please Mrs. Fishbourne just give me a moment while I get the Professor.”

The sound of elevator music filled the line and Star turned to Logan and he could see the act was over and she was back to her charming self.

“These people are supposed to be your friends? This guy sounded like he wanted you to be in trouble-I knew it wasn’t just me, you really are a pain in the –“

“Hello, Professor Xavier Speaking, may I ask who I am speaking with please?”

Star was excited beyond belief, this was him! This was the same guy!! At least he sounded the same, voice textured and aged with time, sprinkled with a British accent. She had to be sure, she took a deep breath.

“Hi professor, I think we spoke recently, do you know what color sweater I’m wearing?”

She heard a silence on the other end and then Professor Xavier began laughing.

Star was scarred, was it him or wasn’t it? He should know exactly what she was talking about…

“I presume I’m talking with the girl Logan met in Canada? You know my dear it really is rude to hang up on someone, but I am glad there was a point to your actions.”

She could hear the laughter in his voice and it made her all the more eager to reach through the phone and hug the life out of him.

“I’m so sorry I did that, I just had to be sure, you know Logan comes off a little,” she had a long list of words to choose from but it was shortened when she realized who she was talking to, she had to try not to act crude, “well he comes off a little harsh but I guess it’s just the nature of his personality.”

They exchanged pleasantries and Star told him her name at least, but other than that the professor wasn’t any more successful in obtaining information than Logan had been and at the end of a respectful amount of time Star handed Logan the phone.

He told the professor a few things Star didn’t understand and said they’d be there in three days at the most and hung up the phone.



That memory was hours old and afterward Logan had been nicer to the girl; he would give her the tiniest iota of credit, for coming up with that idea, which made more sense to him as a whole. He even hated her a little less, again by the tiniest iota, because when she had spoken with the professor Logan had been assaulted by the smell coming off of her. It was just sheer joy and he could see this glimmer of something that had been in her eye ever since, Logan guessed you would call it hope.

However, sitting in the dingy room after she’d been in the bathroom for over two and half hours, and after pissing in the parking lot, Logan could thoroughly say that he was fed up and ready to kill her again.

He figured he couldn’t kill her now because the Professor expected him to come home with her, and if not for the fact that Marie was at the school Logan would just not show up for another decade and then stop by. That was the sacrifice he was willing to make if it meant he got to drive home in peace.

The bathroom door opened, finally and steam followed the girl out in thick clouds, rolling out of the room to Logan. The steam brought with it every sugary, flowery smell that Logan couldn’t stand and he coughed at the intrusion of foreign smells invading his nostrils.

“There, all done, bathrooms all yours.”

She had that shit eating grin on again and Logan hated her, oh how he hated her. He wished she knew or he wished he had a way of expressing to her, that the only thing saving her right now was the fact that the professor was a strong enough telepath to read his mind and Logan wouldn’t be able to lie and say she’d chosen not to come.

He sighed, dejectedly this time and finished his beer. It was going to be one long ass night.

After a few days on the road Star was going stir crazy. They drove, they ate they fought. They slept, they drank they fought. They drove some more, they got more supplies, and then they fought. They re-upped on gas, did a little laundry and then…they fought. Again. Star and Wolverine were not a match made in heaven for a road trip duo, they constantly argued, never over anything important mostly just over the food the one ate or the way Logan never adhered to the laws of the road, whether it was breaking the speed limit or cutting people off or refusing to signal. He was an annoying bastard as far as Star was concerned and she could see why he spent so much time traveling, the man was not a people person.

She sighed idly running her fingers up and down the window, it was raining outside and the ground was a slushy mess.


“What’s eatin you?”

The words he spit at her carried the scent of his cigar, which was wafting through the enclosed cab.
She wanted to say she was sick of the road, sick of driving from place to place; she wanted to stay in one place for a period of time longer than 48 hours and wake up in a bed she knew she’d be sleeping in for more than one night at a time. Instead she just shrugged her shoulders and replied with a generic

“Nothin.”

Before returning her averted gaze to the window letting her thoughts whirl. They had one full day ahead of them before they reached Westchester. They’d stop for the night, their last night together on the road, they’d leave at dawn the next day. Logan had made it very clear they weren’t leaving at ten after or twenty after or even fifteen after, the minute the sun rose he was gone with or without her. She knew the logic behind his thinking, he wanted rid of her. Girl couldn’t say she blamed him; she hadn’t exactly made things easy for him. That just made it easier for her not to care though; she didn’t expect Logan to be in her life for more than a week, better to not make a friend of him. Logan knew if he drove the whole day then they would arrive at Xavier’s around six pm. She hoped going there was a good idea…
She sighed again.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Logan biting on the end of his cigar in agitation; he took it out balancing it between two fingers.

“Got something on yer mind?”

“Yeah,” she paused swallowing.

He looked surprised, they still hadn’t exchanged information beyond names and she refused to tell him her real name. He didn’t hate her, but he didn’t like her and he certainly wasn’t going to extend anymore of an olive branch than he already had. After all, the girl, if you could call her that, was still breathing. He had to get points for not turning her into mince meat. Maybe after their time on the road she was finally going to open up a little bit?

“You drive like shit.”

He growled, low and menacingly. Oh man did Xavier owe him for this one; he grumbled for another mile before returning the cigar to its perch between his teeth and went back to ignoring the irritating person in his front seat.



They parked in the lot of a respectable looking hotel, a much nicer place than the foul motels Logan usually frequented.

He’d changed his choice in venues for two reasons. The biggest one was to keep the girl he was traveling with from bitching, two nights of staying in places where hookers took their marks or where the drug dealers came to count their cash and Star wouldn’t step foot in another one. Wouldn’t shut the hell up about it either, Logan had almost killed her the way she carried on making his ears bleed. The second reason was because after he and her had passed an obvious drug deal, being conducted by men with guns he figured that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if she wasn’t exposed to that, she seemed too young to see such things- not that she had told Logan her age or…any other piece of information about her. Besides, if he got shot by unruly drug dealers he’d be back on his feet in a few minutes, she wouldn’t.

Logan had never been a particularly lucky man; you just didn’t wake up naked and bloody in the snow to have amnesia the only constant in your life just to call yourself lucky. Luck had never really entered his life one way or another good or bad he took care of himself and he never really gave it much thought. However after days of traveling with Star on the road he began to slowly realize that she was a magnet for bad luck. Point in case, standing in the lobby of a hotel that you don’t want to pay for, buying a room you only need because of the teenage mutant nuisance who invited herself into your life, as you’re being told by a man you’d like to seriously introduce to your claws that there aren’t any rooms in town due to some moronic conference or convention or something equally unappealing to Logan and to top it all of the only room that is available in this hotel is a room with a single bed.

Previously mentioned clerk also informed Logan that the room available had a bed that was standard size and unbeknownst to the clerk Logan had a big issue with that because where the hell was Star going to sleep? One room bed you can bet your sweet ass Logan was taking it, she could curl up on the floor for all he cared. Up until this point they had always gotten a room with two bed and if not two beds then one bed and at least a couch. Finally the clerk announced that all the standard rooms came with a couch. Hey the little urchin needed some place to sleep, the couch was good enough!

Originally, he wanted the bed. Star bitched and moaned until Logan conceded defeat and Star was allowed to sleep on the bed. His only condition for giving up the bed was that Star wasn’t allowed to speak for the rest of the night, not a peep. She kept her word and three hours later any onlooker would see Star wrapped up cozy in the blankets and Logan sleeping in an awkward position, feet dangling off the side of the couch, and head propped up uncomfortably.

Star was an extremely light sleeper and even though she was asleep, she could still hear them. It wasn’t the first night she’d woken up to Logan grunting in his sleep. The first time he’d woken himself up and gone back to sleep and Star assumed that he was having a wet dream or something along those lines. This night hadn’t been any different, she could hear him moaning and groaning and she could hear his mouth, slack and lazy with sleep trying to form the sound of someone’s name. Marine? Sounded like it to her sleep addled brain, and the moaning continued. Star burrowed her head into her pillow and tried to resist the urge to go over and hold his nose or something to get him to wake up.

Eventually the moans got worse and Star, who wasn’t asleep anymore now, was occupying herself by listening acutely to the sounds coming from the man on the couch. She realized that the sounds he had been making had changed, these new noises sounded harsh and gruffer, almost raw. Before the noises had been intense and almost breathy…well as breathy as a man like Logan could get. Now they sounded almost….frightening? He was nearly barking in his sleep, growling and flopping on the couch. Star sighed annoyed; leave it to a man like Logan who lived for the thrill of the fight to be dreaming about a good brawl right after a sex dream. She flipped over eagerly seeking the magical position that would lure her back into unconsciousness, but suddenly Logan let out a whimper and Star never knew what possessed her but she picked up one of her pillows and threw it at him. She figured this was the least aggressive way she could wake him, after all he’d sprung for this little venture to Westchester.

Shint

The sound of Logan’s claws coming out seconds before a feral growl ripped through the air alerted Star that something was wrong. For a minute she thought Logan had sensed someone coming and was preparing for a real fight because he never unleashed his claws unless something was up. Star sat up faster than she thought possible and stumbled with clumsy sleep affected lethargic limbs struggling to turn the lamp on the bedside on. As she fumbled for the switch on the lamp she heard the sound of the claws ripping through something and cranked on the lamp just in time to see Logan mercilessly butchering the pillow.

It occurred to her that the man sitting on the couch in front of her had most definitely NOT awoken from a sex dream. Sweat clung to him like grapes to the vine and his skin glittered in the thin yellow light of the lamp. His eyes were wild and unfocused, they sifted uneasily around like that of a predator, Star had never seen him like this and she called to him tentatively.

“Lo-logan?”

Her voice cracked and his eyes were on her with such velocity that she cursed her fear. She got the distinct impression that it would be very wise to not be giving off the scent of fear right now.

Logan’s eyes were on her but they were clouded and unclear, he stared right at her but didn’t see her and she wondered what images danced before his eyes at that moment. She spoke again and this time her voice was soothing and placating, nothing like her own voice. The voice one would use to coax a scared cat out of a tree or to assure a person on a suicide hotline not to jump.

“Logan, it’s okay, it’s me, Star, you okay?”

At the sound of her name his eyes cleared and she was grateful that her annoying presence in his life had packed enough of a punch to bring him to awareness at a time like this.

He breathed in, one, two and three deep breaths blowing them out nosily. She wasn’t sure if he was trying to calm himself and regain his composure if he was trying to sniff the air and gain his bearings-she’d seen him do it on more than one occasion. He looked at her at a loss for words, he looked down at the rug and she deemed it safe enough to approach him. She climbed out of the bed and walked over to him, taking a seat next to him at the couch, the sheet he was sleeping one was completely soaked with his sweat sitting on it brought memories to Star of sitting on a park bench after the rain. What the hell had he been dreaming about?

“Nightmare?”

Her voice still sounded croaky because it was thick with sleep, even if she did feel more alert.
He nodded.

“Want to sleep in the bed?”

He looked at her immediately, one eyebrow shooting up into his hairline.

“With you?”

She snorted by force of habit.

“You wish bub,” she smirked at him hoping he took it as a joke and not an insult, “no by yourself; if you let me change the sheets then I’ll switch with you.”

It was the first nice thing she’d ever-and Logan meant- EVER done for him since they’d started traveling together. He seriously felt his heart stop beating for a minute, purely out of shock.

“Nah, that’s okay kid, I just need a minute. Go back to bed.”

“I don’t know, you killed my pillow.”

“You threw it at me.”

“Well I heard you grunting I didn’t know what you were dreaming about..”

The way she let her voice trail off and dropped her gaze to the floor alerted Logan that she thought he was dreaming about something that wasn’t PG rated.

“Uh-huh and what did you think?”

He studied her; this was the closest they’d gotten to normal conversation.

He couldn’t imagine someone as young as her being on the road, she looked 16 at most. She had short brown hair which when Logan first seen it had appeared to be a dark mahogany color. Of course that later turned out to because she had been deprived of a shower for a good long while and when he’d taken her to their first motel room and she’d washed her hair, she turned out to have a very light colored hair almost brown with very light blond streaks running through it. Her eyes were hazel and actually similar to his own except instead of being more green like his were Star’s eyes had a great amount of gold coloring on them, and reminded him of wheat. He wondered if all the gold coloring in her hair and eyes came from her mutation but he never questioned it enough to think on it. To Logan Star looked like a really sweet girl- UNTIL she opened her mouth that of course shattered any illusions.

She finally answered him, but it was with another question, he guessed she was avoiding an embarrassing situation.

“Who’s Maurine?”

“Maurine?”

His tone was skeptical and questioning.

“Yeah, Maurine or Marine or just Marn- you don’t exactly annunciate in your sleep.

Logan wasn’t one for blushing but if not for the fact that this girl’s opinion meant next to nothing to him, be probably would have been doing just that. Marie is who she was thinking of. Maybe he had been having one those dreams, truth was he just didn’t remember and he told Star as much.

“Listen, these dreams I have these nightmares, I don’t know what the hell they’re off I don’t have memories of this, it’s just a nightmare.”

Star sort of smiled this slow and lazy looking smile that looked a little bit like sympathy. That really pissed Logan

“Listen kid don’t go givin me those wounded little girl looks, I ain’t lookin for any pity-“

At that moment she couldn’t have explained exactly what possessed her to do it and it would take her months before she pinpointed the exact reason was because she felt close to Logan in this brief instance and it was a good feeling, the last time she’d felt close to someone had been almost a year ago. The human connection never failed to bring out her stupid side and this moment in time, although she couldn’t know just then, would always serve for the rest of her life as a reminder of that lesson. Sharing with others wasn’t such a good idea but Logan’s wounded pride made her step forward and offer something that wasn’t’ her’s to give.

“It’s not pity! I just…I get it okay. I don’t have…. Ah fuck it never mind.”

Star got up to leave the couch and she felt a very sharp grasp lacing around her wrist-damn! She knew Logan was strong but she could honestly say she couldn’t have walked another inch if she truly wanted to.
She sat back down because she seemed to have his attention and that wasn’t such a bad thing now that she thought about it.

His eyes were searching her face and he seemed to nod his head a little giving her the green light, and when she still didn’t speak he vocalized his wishes.

“Go ahead.”

She began to talk in a little whisper hoping that this slight half truth wouldn’t come back to bite her in the ass.

“I don’t know a whole lot about what happened to me, I gave myself the name Star, I don’t know who I am or where I’m from and I don’t know what happened to me or how I came to be, I woke up and I was in Canada and I discovered from there my mutation and then I was trying to get to Alaska.”

It occurred to her in those moments that she really didn’t know a whole lot about Logan and his life and she never dreamed in a 1,000 years that her telling him what she had just said would ever have the effect on him that it was having.

He put a gruff and callused hand over her’s, it covered her entire hand. He gave her a spotty smile and simply said:

“I know all about that.”

The surprise was clearly written on her face and Logan never elaborated or told her what he meant by that. She wasn’t confused though, she sensed it was something she wasn’t allowed to ask about and Logan merely slipped off the couch and went to the bathroom. She heard the water running, heard him splashing water on his face and chest. While he was in there she changed the sheets on the couch, glad that Logan had asked for extra sheets. She discarded of the sweat soaked sheet by rolling the offending fabric into a ball and tossing it into a corner. She took the sheet off her own bed and threw it haphazardly over the couch and tucked the corners in trying to make it as neat as possible.

She kept the fitted sheet on the bed and threw the extra pillow that had been on the couch over to the bed which only had one pillow due to Logan’s little slashing nightmare. She curled up the couch and threw the blanket over herself and turned out the light. Logan was still in the bathroom but she got the sense they were done talking for the evening.

Eventually he did come out, a good fifteen minutes later, and despite its lumps and rough spots Star was semi-asleep on the couch when he came out of the bathroom.
He grunted over her sleeping form and lightly kicked her with his foot.

“Kid, you don’t gotta sleep here, I said the couch was fine.”

A muffled
“Shut up before I change my mind” brought the first and only smile to Logan’s lips as a reaction to something coming out of Star’s mouth and that was the end of it. He shuffled off to bed and the next day they hit the road.



Star knew something was different from the moment she opened her eyes, because Logan acted nothing like himself the next day. He was kind and considerate towards her, he waited patiently for her to get ready and never even barked at her once when she dilly dallied, taking her time. He asked if she wanted breakfast-a first- and Star wondered if he’d been zapped by aliens while they slept. She analyzed his behavior all morning and noted his attentiveness when after being on the road for an hour he spotted her rubbing her hands and wordlessly put on the heater.

Maybe it was his dream? He felt vulnerable? Maybe it was because she had taken the couch and given him the bed? Maybe it was their talk the night before? “I know all about that” didn’t seem to Star as a breakthrough but she couldn’t guess at Logan’s behavior and just pondered to herself mostly until they arrived at the mansion.
Star had to bit her lips from gasping, she thought it would make her look entirely too naïve when they pulled up in front of Xavier’s. She couldn’t stop the wonder that crept up into her gaze though and she had to appreciate the fact that there were friendly people behind those white washed walls, people who wouldn’t judge her or abandon her…well not because she was a mutant anyhow.

The next series of events happened in a blur and Star found it hard to keep track of everything that was going on around her. Logan and her parked in an over sized garage and Star nearly tripped over herself several times.

They parked and it wasn’t like she thought it would be, with fireworks and a clamor at their arrival, the merely stopped the truck, hopped out and walked through the garage. Mustangs, Harley’s, Bentley’s and Cadillac’s greeted them and Star, who knew little to nothing about cars was still impressed with the sleek shiny newness of everything.

Star was in a daze from the first mutant she met to the time she came before the professor. The events of the day blurred into one long standing moment and Star did her best to keep up. She met several older adults, the famed telepath Jean Grey, who Star had only ever seen on TV before when she was being filmed walking into a meeting in Washington. She met a rather large blue man who quoted William Shakespeare upon meeting her, Dr. Grey’s husband Scott, who for all intense purposes was man meat personified, the man was hot! She met a charming woman with white hair which looked strikingly like spun silver hanging out of her head and dazzling blue eyes. Sometimes people’s mutations affected their outward appearance and Star made a mental note to ask that lady what her’s was.
There were many other people to meet after that and faces and voices and mutations blurred together in a dizzying whirl and she was shocked to cast a glance at the grandfather clock sitting in the hall which proudly proclaimed that it was 9pm. She hadn’t even so much as seen Logan since she’d arrived, where the hell had he gone? She met a bunch of students who referred to themselves as the jr. X-men, incidentally the same people who gave her the 411 on the real X-men and a few school rumors. The jr. X-men, as she was told, were students who still attended the school but who had trained for and participated in a few minor missions. It was hard to keep code names and regular names separate but she managed.
Ironically she still hadn’t met Professor Xavier at this point, and Star realized what made it ironic was that she didn’t think there was any other reason to be here other than to meet him, but upon arriving she had found plenty. Schooling, kids like her, a team of undercover mutants fighting bad guys- that could only be fun.

Eventually Dr. Grey told her that Professor Xavier was waiting for her in his office and Star almost fell down she was so nervous, he was not only powerful telepath but the* leading voice in mutant rights. Now that she was walking towards his office trying hard to keep up with the long legs of Dr. Grey, she had to admit she was kind of scared.

Dr. Grey opened two thick wooden doors to revel a richly decorated room. Plush royal blue carpet crunched lightly under her feet, and thick red drapes hanging from golden ornate rods decorated two large French windows. In the middle of the room there was a beautiful mahogany desk and behind it sat the one person that Star had ever come close to admiring.

Her first instinct of course was to introduce herself by her full name, and offer her hand but she blushed realizing that she couldn’t do that because she’d told Logan she had no memories, would the professor know if she were lying or not?

The professor broke the silence.

“Hello my name is Professor Xavier, welcome to my school. I understand you’ve already met Dr. Grey and of course you know Logan.”

He gestured to his left.

She looked up and noticed for the first time that Logan was standing in the left foremost corner of the room, where the hell had he come from?

She mumbled a very lame how do you do because she didn’t want to introduce herself to her idol by the name Star.
“Star, it seems you’ve given Logan quite the hard time.”
She looked down; she supposed car theft was probably frowned upon here.

It was awkward for her having to act polite in front of Logan; after all she’d shown him a couple of sides of herself but not that one.

“Yeah I didn’t make this trip easy for him, but he handled it well.”

“Logan tells me you’ve had some problems remembering your past?”

She shot Logan such a fuming gaze loaded with malice that not only would it have melted ice, but it would have taken the resulting water and boiled it. She thought she saw him react briefly but then he put his stoic face back into place and chewed on the end of an unlit cigar.
She licked dry lips before she replied.

“ Some trouble with my memories, yes.”
It wasn’t a total lie; it was just a far cry from the truth.

Xavier turned ancient eyes towards Logan and asked in a gentlemanly manner if he would excuse the two of them and extended his proposal to Dr. Grey who stood obediently in the corner. They both nodded before walking out of the room.

“Please sit.”

She sat on one of the lush chairs upholstered in leather and looked out across the desk.

For the next half hour Xavier spoke with her in a kind and almost loving manner explaining to her the way things worked at the school, how some parents knew their children were there and knew it was a school for mutants and how most parents assumed it to be a prep school for gifted youngsters. The rest of the student body was made up of mutants who had run away from troubled environments. Even though he never said so Star got the distinct feeling that the runaway category was the one in which Xavier was sorting her.



Logan sat in his nursing a beer, not his first since he’d returned, thinking over what the professor had said. He had yet to see Rogue because when he’d returned she’d been out shopping with that girl Jubilation Lee. According to the professor, they had been practicing her ability to control her mutation. Logan sighed forlornly he wanted her to be able to control her mutation, he was happy to hear she’d been having small break through’s, but if he was happy for her then why did he feel this way?
Logan had to admit that the idea of a touchable Marie created a tight swelling in his chest and Logan realized it was a mix of pride and desire that tied the knot there. That girl deserved a slice of normal in a life that hadn’t been very nice to her, but even as he thought that he realized he wasn’t considered normal because hell he wasn’t normal and he definitely wasn’t the best she could do.

Marie and Logan had undoubtedly grown closer and their friendship had blossomed into something that Logan never could have expected at this stage in his life. Logan first left the mansion after the statue of Liberty and he’d returned six months later, almost to the day. He’d reclaimed his dog tags and struck up his friendship with Rogue, who at the time had been one of the few people in the mansion to truly accept his way of wondering in and out of the mansion, no questions asked. Storm was always welcoming and Jean seemed refined, almost compassionate but withdrawn but Logan suspected that had more to do with her desire to roll in the hay than anything else, and Scott of course was…well…a dick.

Hey, that’s life.

He hadn’t stayed long after his first time being back, maybe three weeks or a month before he was gone again and chasing another lead. He found Marie that night, she had just turned eighteen and he’d given her a cup cake with a candle because…that was just about the extent of his party attitude. She’d blushed and Logan felt his lips tugging up into a smile at the memory. He’d left about a week after her birthday but not before giving her his tags, a wink and roughish grin that held a lot of promise. Mind you what he was promising he didn’t quite know himself, but he hoped it conveyed the message of “see you soon and then we can have some fun.” Only trouble was Logan and Marie probably had very different ideas of what fun was, he could think of a few things she probably didn’t even know existed that could be a LOT of fun.

Another eight months on the road and Logan came back again, pretty much to identical events as his first return. Jean was friendlier though and warmer somehow, the ring Scott had put on her finger was restriction enough to ever flare an attraction between them further and Logan had accepted that, much to his surprise, without issue. Of course that didn’t stop him from flirting shamelessly, if for no other reason than to piss Scott off.

A rough little laugh coming out of his mouth disturbed the silence of his room as he snaked through his memories.

The rest of the team had been more welcoming, they were getting used to him and he stayed that time for nearly five months before another lead presented itself. Marie turned nineteen, they drank beer together when no one was looking and he’d share his cigars with her because she loved the smell of them, which she confessed had come from him. Sometimes he’d walk by her room and smell the pungent odor and laugh ruefully to himself because he was one of the few people who knew she’d leave them burning just for the smell.

Two months later he had come back and to stay for good and found that even though Marie was still technically a teenager at nineteen, she was blossoming into a hell of a woman. She attended college classes, which he wouldn’t lie made him damn proud, and he watched her for a few months as her hips took on the sway that had nothing to do with being a kid and everything to do with growing up, he watched as she got less shy around the men, especially a Cajun who Logan had almost throttled twice for the way he suggestively brushed up again Marie in the hall, and Logan even had the distinct pleasure of watching Marie go on her first mission.

More missions followed after that and Marie went on them because she was part of the team, but Logan would be damned if her presence didn’t drive him to distraction every time. Her first mission hadn’t been a combative one, Logan, Scott and Rogue had gone to pick up a stranded mutant in Montana, a girl who was having trouble controlling her mutation of moving gravel and rocks. It was Rogue’s first mission and Logan had agreed to come just because it was Rogue’s first mission and they had asked Rogue to come just because it was a safe mission for her first time. The next missions that would include Wolverine and Rogue would turn out to be decidedly more dangerous and Wolverine had sustained injuries more than once protecting her.

He laughed again just a little because he realized most girls would have loved an extra pair of eyes watching their back in a combat situation, not Rogue. Not his Marie, she all but beat him up herself after the last time. They’d been heavily outnumbered and he was busy trying to kill a very large robotic enemy when he realized Rogue was cornered and on the verge of passing out, can’t absorb an enemies life source when you’re fighting a metal machine. Logan had forgotten about his enemy and rushed over to save her. He’d taken out her target no problem but his target struck him with a vengeance from behind and Logan went down for the count. For any other man this would be a problem but for Logan it simply meant that the Wolverine was unleashed. Wolverine was his code name and it was also the name of the beast which lurked inside of him, when Logan came to near death experiences the animal came out and this situation was no exception.

It wasn’t the first time it had happened and it wasn’t even the first time he felt shame over losing control, but it was the first time it had happened in front of Rogue and for some reason the idea of her knowing that about him, truly knowing that and seeing it for herself (because hearing and seeing it up close were two totally different things) really scared him. In the moments when the Wolverine took over Logan would lose his manhood as he succumbed to a berserker like rage which, granted, saved his life but temporarily robbed him of his civilities. Logan thought of himself as more man than animal but…sometimes even he had to wonder.

Others on the team didn’t judge him but they didn’t look at him as a regular guy they saw him for what he really was. A man who was holding a leash which was tight around the neck of a fierce and dangerous animal, and clearly the man sometimes dropped the leash. The other members of the team looked at him like he was a man who controlled a beast and sometimes allowed for that control to get turned around. He knew they didn’t realize that when Wolverine came out it wasn’t with Logan’s permission.

Some of the X-men who were nearly twice her age viewed him as a possible threat and tiptoed on egg shells around him, but Marie never did. Marie never did that, not even once in all the time he’d known her. Now that was saying something! The time when he saved her life and let out Wolverine in front of her, she would describe it to him later as knowing it wasn’t really her Logan , and she had used those words while she blushed furiously, but still feeling safe all the same. Logan knew it was right for her to feel safe because he would never hurt her and he knew Wolverine would only die trying to save her. It was a realization which comforted him and plagued him at the same time.

She was nearly twenty now, but that still seemed too young to Logan for her to know what you wanted out of life. To know who she wanted, Marie had gotten her own room when she’d turned eighteen and Logan’s wasn’t far from it. Due to the proximity of their rooms he knew she’d never had any other men in her room but wondered if she ever let anyone else in her heart. She’d dated Bobby and at times she even seemed interested in the Cajun, Logan wondered if anything had changed while he was gone this time getting Star out of Canada, not that that had been his original intent upon leaving.

This was a short trip, and he’d only been gone a month, high up in the boonies of Canada and skirting over the edge of the border into Alaska, to go get her that damned postcard because he knew how much Marie wanted to see the Northern Lights. Marie was his best friend, he knew that’s what she was even though he’d never had a best friend before, or one he could recall at least. They ate together, laughed together, drank together and lived together when Logan stayed in one place long enough. On missions they were team mates fighting side by side to protect one another. The various months on and off that Logan resided at the mansion were happy times between the two of them and he and Marie would fall into an easy routine. A routine that Logan found he missed more than he, or any other self respecting man, would be willing to admit. Life in the mansion with Marie was easy, she would smoke cigars with him and talk about life, and she’d curl up next to him without a second thought and watch, impressively for a girl, the roughest and most gruesome of hockey games. Marie would drink beer with him and grimace in a way that scrunched up her eyebrows and made her mouth dry up because Marie hated the taste of beer but craved it something fierce and Logan would laugh at that and the faces she made. On nights when the nightmares overtook her she’d creep into his bed, after he’d stabbed her once while he slept! Marie never turned him away and never regarded him with fear or distaste. He sighed, audibly and heavily, maybe things would be a lot simpler if she did.

Logan growled harshly to himself, he had to remind himself that just because she had touchable skin, it didn’t mean it was there for him to touch. Besides, he was being ridiculous, rogue had even learned to control her mutation yet, he still had time to clear his head.

A knock at the door made him jump.

Star sat in Xavier’s office enchanted with the man in front of her. She never dreamed that the same man who spoke out that every mutant should be treated equal would also actually have a private school where mutants like her could go, she never dreamed that he’d have actually feed, educate and protect these mutants from the outside world until they were adults. He’d welcomed her with open arms and now she was a resident here, or to be at least. She needed to talk about the professor about getting a room of her own… dorming? Not her thing.



They spoke for nearly an hour, and they spoke about everything. Teachers here, what classes she could take, being tested because she didn’t*have a memory and therefore didn’t know* what level she was at. She was hoping to avoid any sticky questions being asked about her memories or her past, but Xavier was a very skilled speaker. One minute they were talking about her favorite school subjects and before Star had blinked Xavier, for all his kindly old man mannerisms had taken on a sharp inquisitive tone that suggested he didn’t need to be psychic to know her thoughts, and was probing deeply into her past with open curiosity.

“Star, I know you’ve suffered a great deal being out on the open road, I do realize what it must have been like a for a girl your age to be traveling alone stopping from place to place, unsure of where her next meal would be…”

It sounded to her like a generalized statement, just something the Professor was saying to be nice, to sympathize with her and make her feel understood.

“However, I wonder what you know about mutations, about mine for example.”

She shrugged slightly confused with the way his statement ended.

“I know you’re a powerful telepath and I know you can read minds?...”
It came out as a question because she really didn’t know a lot about telepaths or how people’s minds worked.

“Yes, I can read your mind, I can move objects with the power of my mind and I can see into people’s pasts, I am capable of reading their minds and seeing images that they even do not know they possess.”
Star gulped, if he could do that then she really hoped he hadn’t tried to, because truth was she remembered a lot more than she let on.

“Star, I wanted to speak with about one more thing before we adjourn our little meeting.”

Her voice was shaky but she was determined to keep a calm exposure.

“Go ahead.”

“Logan.”

This threw her for a loop.

~*~*~**~*~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

He hadn’t realized how deep in thought he’d been until the muffled knock spooked him into awareness. He smelt her even before she spoke, she always smelled like flowers, like flowers and vanilla. With Logan’s sharp sense of smell he could smell things differently, like bacon didn’t smell like bacon when he concentrated on the scent, it smelled like oil, heat and fried meat. Marie smelled like flowers, like a whole meadow with fresh grass, and dewy pollinated spring buds, he’d only smelled that smell when he traveled in warm areas and he smelled fresh flowers and she always smelled like vanilla, or what he perceived of as vanilla, to him up close vanilla smelled like a soft caress with a sharp spice that made his mouth water.

“Sugah, you in there?”

He opened the door and she was there, smile in place and scent so strong it made him sway he as sought to suck it out of the air. She shouldn’t be allowed to smell that good, but he’d never tell her that. He stepped aside and let her walk in and when the door was closed and he was facing her she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him.

“Ah heard you found anotha run away in Canada,” she laughed lightly “I guess us poor road side girls are just drawn to you huh?”

She looked good, jeans hugged her legs, long legs mind you and she wore a short sleeve shirt with high up opera gloves. Her hair was half up and half down the way some girls wore it, and hug gracefully down to her hips, swaying in sync with them when she walked.

“I didn’t exactly find her, she found me. Little runt tried stealing my truck.”

At that Marie threw her head back and laughed and Logan bathed in the noise. God he was turning into a pansy. He laughed too and he didn’t even know what she was laughing about, her smile just had that effect on him.

“I can’t picture the mighty Logan getting his truck stolen by a kid.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call her a kid, Marie. More like a damned con artist. I should have left her up there.”


“Pahlease, you? Leave a kid stranded by the side of the road? You’re just a big fuzzy teddy bear Logan you’d neva do that no matta what you say.”

“I almost left you!”

“Ah but almost doesn’t count.”

She wagged a finger in her face and he realized that no one ever really talked to him like this…


Jokingly. Easily... playfully

He grumbled, but half heartedly. He was badass dammit, mutant teenagers were not supposed to be his undoing! For all his efforts though Marie just gave him a shy little laugh that sent a direct tug at his heart and he wondered when he’d become so god damned effected by her.

He cleared his throat and thoughts simultaneously.

“Professor told me you’re working on controllin’ you’re mutation?”


“Yeah, he’s been helpin me a lot, I’m learnin how to do things I never could before.”

Definitely the wrong sentence, at her words a flood gate opened in Logan’s mind of all the things they could do together that she had never done before. Things he hoped she hadn’t done before and he could think of a few things he’d want to show her.


“Like touchable skin?”

His voice sounded husky even to him and damn him to hell but Marie noticed, he knew she had because she dragged her eyes off of his face and looked down at the carpet like it was the best thing in the world.

“Mostly it’s all about concentration, mind ova machine ya know?”

He grunted.

“You’re hardly a machine darlin.”

She grinned her eyes catching his and he returned her smile, surprised by how easy and natural it felt to share a smile with her.

“Yeah well after Carol you’d be a little surprised, mister.”

~*~*~**~*~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

When Star spoke next her calm composure flew out the window and she mentally cursed when her voice shook.

“Lo-Logan?”

Star was nothing if not good at being a bullshit artist and at reading people’s expressions. She’d always thought she was very intuitive and she’d even entertained the idea for a short while that she’d had telepathic abilities because her hunches were often right. Of course she only entertained that idea until her parents ditched her in the middle of nowhere and cut her off without a dime, she hadn’t really seen that one coming.

One thing she could see, clear as day, was the look Xavier wore on his face. It was so out of place on the old man’s face, what with him being the epitome of a worldly British gentlemen that it took a few minutes for Star to actually recognize the face, and the meaning behind it.


It was the face someone made when they were…dubious or doubtful. The face of a person who was regarding the person in front of them with somewhat of a “I’ve found you out attitude.” Star gulped, she supposed being a good bullshit artist didn’t count for much when you were going up against someone who could read minds.

Xavier was also the epitome of composure and just as quickly as she had absorbed his skeptic appearance, it was gone. The lines of his face became smooth again, all traces of skepticism vanishing just as quickly as they had appeared. His expression was replaced with his normal, kind visage and an almost humorous twinkle entered his eyes, as if he were smirking without using his mouth muscles at all. Star began to get the distinctive impression that Xavier was letting down his guard intentionally, that he was allowing her to read his facial expressions like an open book just to prepare her, to make her ready for the next part of their conversation.

In hindsight of this event Star would realize that had been exactly what he was doing.

“Yes,” he spoke at last and Star took a breath for what felt like the first time in twenty years, “I want to talk to you about Logan. First of all before we venture into this part of our discussion, I’d like to ask you if there is anything in particular that you want to tell me?”
The twinkle in his eyes died down to a slight glint and his lips turned up into a kind, questioning smile.

God fucking dammit!

She thought bitterly to herself.

He knows!

She was too afraid to speak her assumption out loud and Xavier, ever the gentleman, stepped in and helped her out.

“Of course I know.”

She sighed, defeated and shamed. She’d lied, not only to him but to Logan, he was going to make her leave for sure.

Stupid, stupid Stupid! Never Lie to a telepath….

That twinkle fired up a couple of notches at that and he even let out a little laugh.

“Why don’t you tell me the whole story hmm? Take your time my dear we have all the time in the world.

With that he reached for a cup of tea and sat back relaxed in his wheel chair, sipping the warm beverage.


~*~*~**~*~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Carol Danvers was a powerful mutant, and unique in the fact that she had more than one mutation. She was indestructible for one and she could fly for another. Storm could control the weather and she could fly but for the weather goddess it was different, she was riding the winds.

Danvers was a normal looking woman, when Logan had first seen her he’d immediately noticed curly blonde hair and green eyes that seemed to glow. She was muscular and had been in the military, her mutant code name was Ms. Marvel and Logan remembered faintly approving of the name because she was hot and she had kick ass powers.


He was a guy, he wouldn’t apologize for thinking that a woman running around in some half assed costume was hot. If someone had a problem with him oogling his fellow team mates as they bounced around in leather, well….tough.

Plus he really did love her powers, the idea of being indestructible always appealed to him. Sure you could throw just about anything at him and he’d survive, but he’d always felt the pain of the attack. Not to mention his healing factor wasn't instantaneous, it took a minute or two for him to heal fully, more so if the injuries were severe enough.

Once in combat he’d seen Ms. Marvel get hit square in the chest by a nuke launched from a Bazooka. The woman hadn’t even batted and eye and the only evidence of it hitting her was a scorch mark on her uniform.
Yeah Ms. Marvel was one hell of a women and it was too bad about her death…

“How’s she doin up there? Giving you any grief?”

Logan spoke the words softly too Marie because he knew she didn’t like talking about it.

Her sigh spoke volumes though and she just shook her head sadly.

“Nah, she’s real quiet, she only really talks when I fly or smash into something. Otherwise she’s still pretty pissed….about what happened…”

She trailed off looking down again.


Calling the mission unsuccessful was an understatement when you added the fact that Rogue had killed Ms. Marvel. Logan didn’t like to think of it that way, she hadn’t killed anyone, she’d done her job as a member of the team, he knew that. Hell, Danvers had even volunteered for it and the other X-men knew* that, but it didn’t mean they weren’t all well aware of the dangers of Rogue’s skin. On the mission they got a keen reminder and as a result of murdering her that way Rogue permanently absorbed her powers which was all sorts of fucked up and twice as shitty, in Logan’s opinion.

The original plan was for Rogue to only take a little from Ms. Marvel, just a quick touch just enough for Rogue to be able to use some of Danvers powers to guard her back while they escaped. It wasn’t really all that surprising that it didn’t go to plan Logan knew from firsthand experience that in the heat of battle things rarely adhered to the plan.

The original plan was for Rogue to only take a little from Ms. Marvel, just a quick touch just enough for Rogue to be able to use some of Danvers powers to guard her back while they escaped. It wasn’t really all that surprising that it didn’t go to plan Logan knew from firsthand experience that in the heat of battle things rarely adhered to the plan.

Although there were changes occurring in the mutant world every day, some things never changed. One situation which Logan was sick to death of, a situation which was repeatedly brought to the X-men’s attention was experimentation on mutants. The only difference was that on this mission they’d been sent to rescue children and the whole team had been outraged at the knowledge that they were headed off to a facility in the Midwest that had imprisoned kids. It was something they all felt passionate about and Ms. Marvel was no exception.

The facility had a standard setup for an experimentation area. On the surface everything was normal, a regular military compound with soldiers staying on the base. Several layers below the surface though small children ranging from ages eight to seventeen were being kept in barracks and laboratory facilities. At the time of the rescue mission it was unclear as to what the facility wanted with the children, but the X-men were ready to find out.

Mutant children had been disappearing for over a month and after the second or third abduction the professor had poured hours of his time into trying to locate them. He’d spent whole days down in celebro trying to force his power to work to his benefit, but each time he came back with little to no progress. It was beyond unusual and the professor decided that perhaps these abductees were somehow blocking pout Celebro, the only question was how the hell would they know how to do that?

It was only this morning that the professor had sent out a mental alert for the team to suit up and fly out. A boy from Montana had been abducted the night before and the professor had a clear lock on the boy’s position.

The mission did prove successful in the fact that they successfully rescued all of the missing children as well as some whose abduction hadn’t even been reported. All of the children were fitted with collars, and some wore bracelets which had the ability to negate their mutation. Of course when you turned off a mutants mutation, in theory, it shouldn’t have any effect on their brainwaves. However the devices were causing enough interference to jam Celebro’s ability to pick up a frequency on the mutants.

After they had infiltrated the base they realized that getting out was going to be a great deal more difficult. You just can’t fight the way you need to in a life threatening situation when your holding a child in your arms. Although they managed to get all the children free, and up to the first floor to make their exit and run towards the jet, they were under heavy fire the whole time.

In the time that it took to free the children and get the captives up to the top floor of the base, the soldiers on the base had united. A few of the team members were injured and some of the children were weakened and couldn’t walk, there was no way to protect the children and fight the advancing troops at the same time.
They were on foot trying to get the children back into the jet, the troops were mobilizing and blocking their path. Storm and Danvers flew over head, trying an air attack but Storm wasn’t indestructible and could do little against the onslaught of bullets that flew into the sky after them. Ms. Marvel was the only one who was making headway against the soldiers and she swooped down long enough to tell her idea to Rogue.

Touch her. If the team had a second Ms. Marvel they might be able to get to the jet, which would be more than defense enough against the ground troops. She only needed to take a little bit for it too work and Rogue knew it was true.

Rogue removed her glove and steadied herself as she prepared to suck in a part of Ms. Marvel. Rogue knew that she would receive the older woman’s memories and thoughts as well as her powers and she was ready for it, if for no other reason than to help the children. As soon as Rogue’s pale fingers wrapped around Ms. Marvel’s bare cheek, the ground troops threw the bomb.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~*~*~*~*~*~*~


Star sat back regarding the man in front of her with sad, honest eyes. How was she supposed to explain this to him?

I wonder what kind of tea he’s drinking, is that why is looks so calm? I could use a gallon of that

“Would you like a cup?”

She got the eerie feeling that he was reading her mind and it made her suddenly and surprisingly angry. She never thought she’d have that kind of feeling directed at a man whose work she admired so much.

“I once read about you that you had strong ethics, do those go completely out the door as soon as someone walks in here?”

“What do you find unethical?”

“Reading my mind for one!”

He laughed lightly, it was like sturdy bells clinking in sync.

“I’m not reading your mind, merely offering you a beverage.”

“Oh.”

Her shoulders slumped as she lost her head of steam and dropped her gaze into her lap.

She almost didn’t notice the way the tea pot that she hadn’t spotted before sitting in the corner, began to float over to a tea cup and pour itself. Immediately the tea cup flew to her from across the room and she looked up over at Xavier with a very amused look at on her face. She figured this would be one of the last smiles she got out in the next half hour.

“Cream?”

“Yes, please.”

The milk floated up from its position on the tray and began to pour itself into the tea cup, and when Xavier asked her if she wanted one lump of two she smiled in pure delight as two sugar cubes dropped daintily into her tea cup.

“Thank you.”

She took the tea from the desk and began to tell Xavier her tale.


~*~*~**~*~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Didn’t take a genius from there to figure out what happened. The ground troops threw a bomb at them, a god damned bomb, and they were carrying the kids! Logan figured they didn’t care about hurting the kids, they just cared about killing mutants.

God damned bastards.

Everyone got hit by the bomb although it wasn’t particularly powerful. Meant to stun more than to harm and the X-men and the kids all took a minute to gain their bearings and it was a minute they didn’t have. The enemy advanced and no one really noticed that Ms. Marvel wasn’t flying in the sky anymore or that Rogue wasn’t around because they were busy dodging fire and helping the kids.

Ms. Marvel didn’t pull away during the blast, instead she shielded Rogue’s body with her own and when they landed Rogue couldn’t move the woman and her bare hand was pinned awkwardly beneath her. The more of Ms. Marvel she pulled in the more strength she had, but Ms. Marvel didn’t possess any healing abilities and she slipped into a coma before dying a few days after the mission. Once everyone was behind Storm she swooped down and turned a storm into a tornado, literally blowing the soldiers away.

Rogue didn’t speak for two days and when she did start talking her eyes were green and her accent was gone and it took the professor a whole forty-eight hours before he was able to reach the real Rogue. Logan shuddered at the memory.

He saw Rogue looking down at the ground and cupped her chin in his hand tilting her face up.

“Hey, we gotta have this talk again?”

Logan was the one who was by her bed side morning and night, he just didn’t leave her. The professor explained that it was her thoughts that she couldn’t control, not Carol’s thoughts, but Rogue’s own thoughts. Her feelings of immense guilt at having killed a member of the team as well as her feelings of inadequateness. Rogue didn’t see herself as an overly valuable member of the team, a fighter and do-gooder of course, but she didn’t have super strength and she couldn’t fly and she’d in essence killed someone who in her mind could do so much more.
Logan was there helping her to claw out of her depression, making sure she was never alone with her own thoughts.
She flashed him a watery smile.

“No I’m good.”

“You sure?”

She nodded and his hand which hadn’t left her face began to calmly caress her chin with his thumb.

Logan heard rogue gasping at the sensation and in the back of his mind where the thoughts he had couldn’t really break through to the surface he realized no one had probably touched her like this, on the face, caressing like. At least he hoped no one had…
Rogue brought her hand and wrapped her fingers around Logan’s wrist, not really stopping his movements but just holding it there.
She looked into his eyes and could see the specks of gold that floated in his hazel eyes and he noted with relief that her eyes were brown and not green. She licked dry lips as she realized that as close as they were as friends this was the first time they’d been this close, face to face, since Liberty island.

“Logan…”

That one word, spoken from the only person Logan considered his friend and spoken with a world of thick innocence that Logan realized he couldn’t hope to penetrate. He had to back away, he had to breath, he had to get away from her before he did exactly what he wasn’t supposed to do….

He dropped his hand from her face and shrugged it gently away from her prying fingers, this was Marie he was talking about. This wasn’t just some girl that he could push up against the wall for a little one on one time.

“I’m gonna go get washed up kid, do you wanna watch the game later?”
Rogue didn’t even know what game was playing, she didn’t even care. Watching a game meant watching TV on a couch, meant possible snuggle time with Logan. She sighed dejectedly, and took a minute to clear her mind of his hazy state before nodding eagerly and pasting a smile on her lips.

“Sounds great.”

He grinned a little before walking away giving Rogue a great view of the powers of denim when worn by the right ass. Logan’s rear end was that ass.

Star felt it was best if she just rushed into things, anything that the Professor didn’t understand would be sorted out easily enough. She supposed that was the nice part about talking with a telepath there was no need to stop and go over every little detail, which was good because the story of her life wasn’t something Star liked to dwell on.

“I guess I had a pretty average life until I…uh….

“Manifested?”

The Professor offered the word to her like her had offered her the tea, kindly and in a suggestive manner.

Her only response was to nod meekly.

“It happened during summer vacation, we all took a trip down to the Jersey shore. Disgusting place, even my mother who’s not overly picky declined to go in the water. The place is really only good for night life and sun tanning.”

She laughed at the memory of her mother, a woman still living but who she had no contact with. The same could be said of her entire family, it was strange and sad to be talking about her family with a perfect stranger. She hadn’t spoken of any of them in a little over a year.

A look of pain flashed over her face and she fought against it, tried her damndest to place a mask of stoicism so strong it would put Logan’s to shame. She hoped it worked; she always hated to look overly emotional in front of people.

“I fell asleep on a lawn chair, lying out in the sun. I guess I was having a nightmare or something but I started to dream that I was burning, that the sun was actually flowing into me and I couldn’t take it, it was too strong much to strong and I started to burst into flame, in my dream,” she clarified, “and I felt the fire licking at my skin, felt the sensation as my skin actually melted and my blood was boiling.”

She couldn’t help the astonishment that crept into her tone, it had been a grotesque dream that triggered her mutation as well as a fascinating one.




She met the Professors gaze, it was laced with intense concentration and he nodded gently at her to continue.

“I guess I got scared, I guess if I wasn’t a mutant I would have just woken up and it wouldn’t have been a big deal.”

The sigh that came out of her at the end of that statement was enough to make the papers sitting on Xavier’s desk in front of her flutter, it was a heavy sound filled with sadness.

“Of course that isn’t what happened,” a light well placed dry chuckle, “I woke up and I was on fire! I mean if I were normal I would have had sun burn for sure but this was so different. My skin was literally sizzling! It wasn’t melting though like in the dream just retaining the heat and the lawn chair I was sitting in was melting, sticking to my skin and then sliding off as my body temperature rose. I stood up and people were starring at me, mouths open, eyes wide. My mother was sitting on the beach towel under the umbrella behind me, she started screaming….”

Her eyes filled with tears because this was as far in her tale as she could go before she started to realize how much she’d messed up in those first moments.

“Star you needn’t go on if this upsets you.”

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and blew it out nosily through her open mouth. No she had to do this, at least if she told someone about it she wouldn’t always have to walk around with it. A few tears slipped down her cheeks, she never really cried anymore! Just a few silent tears and maybe a little sob. She didn’t sob though, she just smiled at Xavier through the tears and told him she wanted to continue.

“By the time I stood steam was coming off of me and I everything is a little blurry at this point. I couldn't see so well, I could hear my mother screaming and I think my dad was on the boardwalk buying food but he wasn’t there at this point. Wherever I looked my vision was obscured by this hazy heat cloud, rolling over whatever I saw. Next thing I knew I started to feel a pain in my feet, intense like something sharp was jabbing me. I was turning the god damned sand into glass, that’s how hot my body was. A couple of droplets of sweat fell off of my skin and as soon as my sweat hit the sand, it sent up a little cloud of steam. My sweat was the same temperature as boiling water.I ran for the ocean at top speed, it was more difficult to move but I had too.”

She stopped to take a breath and a much needed sip of her tea which was cooling rapidly.

“And when you reached the water?”

“Oh immense relief, I almost cried it was blissful. My skin crackled when the cold water hit it and I dunked myself repeatedly, the entire beach watched me like I was a side show freak! I swear people stood and gathered at the shore line with such interest I was afraid to leave the water, afraid they’d try to abduct me. Eventually I felt myself cool down and when I could see normally again I got out of the water, I realized I needed to get out of the sun. It was the sun fueling it, transforming me.”

To Xavier her words painted the picture of Bobby, the way his body went completely into ice form when he was under distress.

“Were you in any pain?”

She frowned, brow furrowing at his question.


“Not from the actual mutation, no, none at all. My feet were cut up pretty bad though, the salt
water stung with violent intensity and when I went to walk up onto the beach the sand absolutely
killed me, the way it crawled up into my wound. It was painful to say the least.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

Normally Star detested pity or “sympathy” which was just a fancy word for “I’m glad I’m not you” and she actually felt a small sneer nestle on her face directed at the Professor…but then she thought about Logan in the hotel room and the way she wanted to sympathize with him and make him understand that she wasn’t pitying him but reaching out to him. The way this kind and dear man was reaching out to her, so she curved her sneer into a sad smile and thanked the Professor for his words.

“What happened when you got out of the water?”

Did she really want to go into the whole gory detail?

Of course she didn’t…The next words out of her mouth were spoken with bitterness as she recalled the painful memories and remorse mixed with shock, because no matter what there are just some things in life you can never quite grasp.

“Nothing good, I’ll tell you that much. Everyone at the beach was starring and my skin was still smoking, just lightly. As the water dried on my skin though the sun began to heat me again and I made a beeline for my mother’s umbrella and blanket. People moved out of way, they were scared of me, honest to god terrified I’d infect them with my mutantness. I was so angry just then and I felt the heat slither over my skin when my anger rose, and for the record Professor I swear, even before I manifested I always thought that cruelty towards mutants was just another form of racism, I never once had a bad thing to say about someone unless they did something terrible, and that was what infuriated me most of all!”

He merely smiled kindly at her, and she unhappily digressed.

“I made my way to the blanket and my parents were just coming towards me at lightning speed. I didn’t even have time to put my clothes on, the chair I’d burned was sitting in the glassy sand, all twisted metal poles and scorched plastic, and you could smell the burnt plastic, it smelled awful. My father wouldn’t look at me and my mother was in tears, they didn’t say a word and we left the other beach chairs there and grabbed only our towels and our personal belongings before we marched off the beach. I should tell you both my parents think mutants are...” She faltered trying to find the right words... “they think that they.. do it on purpose. They think mutants are genuinely disturbed people who intentionally make things difficult by manifesting powers because they want attention. That’s just their outlook and I never bothered to try to change their mind because I never had a reason to.”

She frowned looking down at the desk, her tea was cold now. She put her palm around the porcelain cup and concentrated. A light glow came from her hand and warmed up the tea again, she sighed as she sipped her now warm beverage. Xavier never said a word and just watched her; he seemed to sense that she needed a moment to compose her thoughts. It was so raw to bring it all up again, her abandonment, the loss of her parents. The suddenness of it all…

Best to get this over with She thought sourly as she rushed into an explanation that would hopefully yield no more questions. She never did manage to shake the sad look that had weaved its way into her topaz colored eyes.

“They left me there, not at that exact moment, but a day and a half later. We talked about what happened some, I accidently lost my cool-no pun intended- during a very heated argument with my parents that night and I made a solar ball, or energy ball. I can shoot them from my hands sometimes when I concentrate; I almost shot up the whole hotel room. The next day my parents wouldn’t let me leave the hotel; they said they’d go out to get breakfast. They uh…they never came back.”

Her eyes fell into her lap and she fought violently against the sensation to cry. When she brought her face back up to Xavier’s placid face her eyes were shimmering with unshed tears.

“I, uh,” she took a moment to take a breath, “I didn’t even know they had left until someone opened the door of my room three hours later. They’d checked out and everything and the person opening my door was the new tenant. Nice guy he gave me a few minutes to pack up my stuff, I noticed then that my parents suitcases were missing and I still remember thinking how in the whole three hours I never even realized that.”

Her voice sounded shocked even to her own ears.

They sat in silence for a few uncomfortable minutes and when Star was ready to look at him, she realized she could feel moisture on her skin and wished for a tissue. No sooner had the thought occurred to her a tissue box floated over to and landed lightly in her lap. She flashed Xavier a watery smile and dabbed at her eyes.

~*~*~*~**~~**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**~*~*~**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~*~*~*~

Logan spent a good hour in the danger room working out his pent up frustrations. He was frustrated sexually beyond belief, he’d meant to stop and get in a good quickie before he’d returned to the mansion but Stars presence had prevented that. Seeing Marie hadn’t done him any help either, he was stiff and sore with want. Aside from sexual frustration he was frustrated with his response to Rogue’s body. There was no denying he wanted to see what she looked like without the layers and layers of clothing and the idea of a touchable Rogue only sent him into a furry of jabs, kicks, uppercuts and sidewinders. His body hummed with frustration and he lost himself to the rhythm of the work out,

Jab

Kick

KICK

KICK!

Oh chuck's gonna have to replace that thing

Claw

Duck

Swing

Punch

Swipe

Is it bad that I'm most happy when I get to beat the shit out of things?


Swerve

Slam

Side step
See this is good no thoughts of Rogue at all...


Push

Kick

Jab

Punch

Thrust

Slam

Fuck

Push her up against the wall, slam her hips into mine, show her how I feel* when I thrust into her and grind her against me until she’s shaking

“ARGH!”

He growled, god dammit! He needed to stop thinking of fucking Rogue!

He redoubled his efforts and once again lived up to his name as the Wolverine as he trashed, and smashed every object his could get his claws on. He didn’t feel less horny when he left the danger room, but he felt like he’d done what he needed to spend the excess energy. A nice stint in the sauna and a cold shower and he’d be good as new.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

After a respectable silence the Professor began his inquisition of sorts.

“Did you ever try to contact your parents again?”

She nodded, using her thumb to wipe away a stray tear drop.

He raised his eyebrows as a way of asking her how that went.

“I hitchhiked back home first chance I got and when I got there, my parents had sold their house and moved. I don’t think they were being dramatic I assumed it was because everyone knew me back home and they figured it would be easier than explaining my disappearance.”

Xavier was stunned; he’d heard of parents turning their freshly mutated children away before but up and moving seemed a little extreme to say the least. There was one question he was dying to know and he hoped she’d answer it on her own.

“Star, how old are you?”

She looked up at him suddenly shocked and amused all at once, she looked a little crazy for a moment and Xavier was taken aback.

“You know I don’t really know. What year is this?”

He remained calm and told her it was 2009, he earned a little sardonic laugh for his efforts.

“And it’s September right now?”

He nodded.

She sighed.

“I’ll be nineteen in two months. I just…they threw me out about a year ago and I try not to think about it, not even to remember that it happened at all. I like to pretend I was just borne into existence fully grown, like Athena!”


He smiled kindly at her before he burst her bubble.

“Ah, but Star Athena had a mother, Zeus merely ate her and Athena grew inside his skull, a rather gruesome way to come into existence.”

She laughed at him.

“I’m sure she enjoyed her birth more than I enjoyed my abandonment. Truth be told Professor this is the first time I’ve spoken about any of it, to any one since the day it happened. I don’t even write my real name down unless I have to and I go around pretending I don’t have a family or if I did have one I don’t remember them because they died when I was younger, or I was in a nasty accident and lost my memory, I think amnesia would be merciful at this point.”

He turned wise and mellow eyes on her and smiled such a charming smile that she felt herself warming up from the inside.

“Star, is that why you told Logan you didn’t have any memories?”

Back to that again, huh? Why does it matter what I told him

She nodded.

“I didn’t want to lie about it; it’s just so much easier than having to remember.”

“Star, I’d like to tell you a few things about Logan and I’d like you to pay close attention.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~*~
“Roguey! You know he wants you! Just make him come get you!”

“Jubilee his hands were practically wrapped around my face, we were starring into each other eyes and everything! He just doesn’t wanna take that last step….”

“Chicky that parts up to you make him want you, take the choice out of his hands! Grab him by the face and suck the lips off of him!”

Rogue sighed talking about this wasn’t making her feel better like she originally thought.

“Oh Jubes he’s just running again, I can’t make him see what’s right in front of his face and it scares me, how the hell am I suppose to get him to understand? He never seems to see where I’m comnin from.”

Rogue’s accent betrayed her it always got a little thicker when she was nervous, or upset….or angry….or really happy….or sleepy….basically it just fluctuated on its own.

“Oh sweetie I promise it’s got to pan out eventually, you know wolvie, he can be crazy sometimes. Remember the time he tried to separate the red color out of Remy’s eyes after he caught him starring at your ass?”

Jubilation rubbed small comforting circles on her friends back trying to shift her depressed mood.

“Jubes I’ve been legal for almost than three years and he just walks right past the opportunity to be with me all the time! What am ah supposed to do dress up in pasties and leather boots and knock on his door?”

She was close to tears but at seeing Jubilations face she almost swallowed her tongue in shock.
“Jubilation no!”

Rogue used her full name to illustrate to the younger girl how serious she was.

Her friends face was one of sheer inspiration, as if the perfect idea had just it her and she looked at Rogue as if the girl had just provided them with the solution to all their problems.

“Rogue listen, don’t say no yet! It could be really tasteful; you know we’ll have you in one of those sheer body suits, so you won’t be full frontal! Then we’ll put pasties on and the boots will cover most of your legs!”

“Have you lost your damn mind? I’m not going to do that! Logan will just think it’s some desperate attempt from a love sick kid.”

Rogue’s resulting sigh was exalted from her body with a great heave of her chest and accompanied by a sorrowful crooning noise, the noise packed such a punch that it left a frown lingering on Rogue’s face and was enough to knock the usually set chipper look right off of Jubilee’s face.

“ROGUE!”

All business, no silly stuff, at least her stern voice got Rogue to look up but it didn’t quite make the sadness disappear from her eyes.

“We have to show Logan that you’re no love sick puppy, you chica are one hot babe and you got all the curves in all the right places and all the charm and sass and not to mention those killer yabbo’s! We have to show Logan your yabbos!!”

“Jubilee what in tarnation is a yabbo?”

Jubilee could spot the shadow of a smirk in her friend’s words and eagerly explained.

“Yabbos babe, your boobs your Mary and Jane, your ladies, your ying-yangs, ding-dongs, doodlies, bazooka’s, your lady bits your little ukulele’s your-

“Ah get the dang point Jubilee, damn! What do you do sit around all day working up new names for em?”

Jubilee got a dangerous glint in her eyes as she winked and chuckled. Now Jubilee was the kind of person that Rogue expected a wink from.

“C’mon chica the time has come to SEX YOU UP and DRESS YOU DOWN!”

Jubilee made a super woman face and punched her fist into the air in mock cheer...
“Oh dear sweet lord up above save me...”

And those were the last words Rogue would be speaking all evening...

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

“Logan didn’t have any memories when he came here professor?”

He’d told her everything and then some. When Star had walked into the tiny office she thought it might have been around 9 maybe nine thirty and she hadn’t intended on staying more than a half hour at most. Of course like most things she thought when she’d come to the mansion she’d been wrong.

It was nearly eleven o’clock and she’d been sitting in the spacious office for two hours. Star had spent a good hour telling the professor her story and as soon as she’d finished he’d told her he wanted to talk about Logan. Before they dove into their Logan talk Professor Xavier made it perfectly clear to her that he was in no way going to turn her away, he told her it was a sin on her parents part to have treated her the way they did and if she still had any desire to find and talk with him then he’d be more than happy to help. He cautioned however not count on a happy reunion and he of course spent a good thirty minutes explaining to her that being a mutant meant nothing else other than the fact that her DNA was slightly altered and that it was merely a matter of genetics like brown hair or red hair.

Star had bitten back a snort at that comment because although she understood what she was saying, being a brunette or a red head didn’t mean you could shoot yellow beams of light out of your hands. Genetics it may have been but normal...eh...

“Logan has lived a very long life Star, you have to realize there is a fair probability that he may have existed long before either of us were born and he may very well ndeed go on living long after both of us are gone.”

“Professor, you say his age is hard to determine because of his mutation but I thought his mutation was his claws?”

Over the course of the last hour Profess Xavier had explained to Star that Logan had been the victim of a grievous experimentation because he was a mutant. He taken a few minutes to explain to her that such things had been heard of but that Logan was the only one who had experienced such torment living at the mansion. The up side was that Logan didn’t remember any of it; he had traces of memories but nothing concrete. Apparently when Star had encountered him he was on a quest for information that may have pertained to his past and it wasn’t his first trip up into the snowy north for that purpose. Star had sat silently absorbing all of that information as if she were a sponge.

“Allow me to explain, Logan’s mutation has always been his claws but it is in addition to his ability to heal. Through his time here Logan has gone on many missions and received various injuries for his efforts, serious injuries,” the professor stressed for her benefit, “but he was capable of recovering from them because of his mutation, his ability to heal. When he was chosen for this particular experiment it was because of his healing capabilities. The claws which I can only assume were made from bone originally were covered in the metal which covers Logan’s skeleton, admantium.”

“Wait a minute here,” a very mischievious look floated into Star’s eyes as she leaned forward in her chair, “you’re telling me that I can do practically anything to Logan and he’ll survive it? Won’t even feel a thing and heal right up kind of deal? Because that could have definite potential..”

The Professor scowled, there was no other way to describe the slight frown and knotted eyebrows look he shot at Star.

“He is quite capable of feeling pain Star, make no mistake there is never a time when he can’t feel what’s happening to him, he is only capable of recovering from it and even his abilities have limits.”

“But if he can feel pain then...the metal they poured on his skeleton it must have been...agonizing.”

She said the last word with the revelation it had brought to her, it came out as almost a pained whisper.

“Yes, I would imagine it was quite painful for him. Star, I trust that you realize that this conversation is strictly confidential. Just as I have no intentions of disclosing what personal information you’ve told me about your life I trust that you will see fit to treat Logan’s personal information with the same courteously.”

The stern face he gave her brooked no argument and Star nodded obligingly.

“I would never say anything professor, but...”

She bit her lip in indecision before continuing.

“Logan still thinks that I don’t remember my past...”

The Professor seemed to look down for a minute before rewarding Star with another of his kind smiles.

“Star, I don’t think it is in your best interest or anyone else’s for you to tell other people that you don’t remember your past. What information you choose to bestow on others regarding your past is of course entirely up to you, I would never dream of forcing you to divulge anything more than what you felt comfortable giving, but I do believe that honesty is the best policy."

“Professor, even if I choose not to tell other people about my past their going to ask, of course I can just say I’d rather not talk about it but what if I become friends with someone and tell them the truth and by some unfortunate turn of events,” she thought dryly how the events always turned toward the unfortunate side when she was involved, “Logan were to find out the truth, he’d hate me.”

The Professor nodded at her observation.

“Yes Star I do believe that he would feel quite betrayed if he were to find out that you lied to him. As you may have realized I was speaking to Logan about his encounter with you and your shared journey here. I assume you noticed a difference in Logan’s attitude towards you after you told him of your pseudo amnesia. When Logan and I spoke of your amnesia and of what you'd told him he seemed profoundly grateful at the prospect of being able to help someone like himself. I think it’s actually quite imperative that Logan doesn’t find out from an external source that what you told him was a lie."

Real comforting thanks.


Star was actually scared to ask her next question.

“What do you suggest?”

“I suggest you find him, maybe not tonight because the hour is very late and tell him what you told me.”

“Wonderful idea.”

She couldn’t help the wise crack that slipped out and even though she covered her hand with her mouth and slapped a quick apologetic look son her face she still thought it was a testament to her restraint that she’d been able to curve her sarcastic side throughout the entire meeting.

The Professor looked amused but only slightly, the twinkle in his eye was battling the wry smile on his mouth.


“You realize he’s going to hate me, right?”

“No I don’t think that will be his reaction at all. He may be angry at first but I believe that in time he’ll come to respect you for your honesty.”

Star did her best but the skeptical “yeah right” look claimed her face and she had a time and half trying to pry the expression off.

“Professor before we leave there’s just one question I wanted to ask you.”

He nodded encouragingly.

Now that you know that I’m nineteen and you realize I have my diploma, and I noticed this place is only teaching children up until the high school level, well...what am I supposed to do here? I mean I’m really interested in staying!”

“I hadn’t told you officially of the X-men and perhaps given the late hour that is a conversation best saved for later but I’d very much like to extend an invitation to join the team if you had an interest. I’d very much like for you to think about what we’ve discussed here and perhaps we can meet for tea again tomorrow? I’ll explain some of the pros and cons of joining the team, I trust the jr. X-men you met tonight may have given you a fair idea but I’d like to elaborate.”

Star laughed lightly she thought there wasn’t anything this man must not know.

“I’d really like that professor, and thank you,” her face she hoped conveyed her pure gratitude,
“you don’t know how much this really means to me.”

“Oh I think I may, I am psychic you know.” He tapped his skull endearingly before wishing her a pleasant good night.

Star was at the door before she stopped and turned.

“Professor?”

“Yes?”

“You will let me be the one to tell Logan, I mean this was all confidential, you won’t say anything to him, right?”

He smiled kindly at her again and Star wondered if his mutation was making people feel perfectly at ease.

“My dear my lips are sealed.”

With that they bade each other good night and Star hopped up the stairs to her new bedroom, she thought it was in the teachers room.